Well, this is a little embarrassing, but...remember I spun and dyed some nice merino for the Koigu Keepsake Shawl? Well. I liked the dyed skeins and I was excited about the project, even though my yarn turned out a little plumper than Koigu. I cast on. I knit. I looked at my shawl-in-progress, and...I just couldn't bond with it. It was bright. It was intense. It was just not soothing, nurturing, quiet.

So I gathered my knitterly advisors around and asked for advice, or maybe it was more like asking for permission...to begin again with new yarn. Permission was granted, so I ripped it. All. The. Way. Out. Ouch.

Now I have four 175 yd. skeins of lovely fingering weight merino in four distinctly different and not necessarily compatible colorways I need to figure out what to do with.....any ideas? I'm a little bit stuck about this.

However, I shook myself off and moved on. I had some more merino ready to ply, this time finer. I plied. I skeined. Its beautiful; a little finer than Koigu this time, and I'm very excited about it. I thought and thought about what colors I would love to wrap around myself, and after some waffling, finally decided on many many shades of pale pink with some other colors thrown in for good measure. I dyed.

Then, with a sink full of tag ends of dye, I called my friend K who wanted to learn to dye, and she came over and had her maiden dye voyage.
It was so exciting; she took to it like a duck to water, and made lots of gorgeous handpainted yarn. I'm pretty sure she's a convert now.


Here she is showing you her first dye projects; so pretty even though the yarn is all bunched up and wet in a bowl. Probably its time for K to start a blog, and post pictures of all that pretty yarn, and what she does with it next!



Oh, and by the way, its K's knitting gauge I love, and she got it from Knitpicks. Good to know.





And in other news, the cat toy binge continues! Here we have Ben inspecting a new batch of felty balls, soaked in catnip tea, and a small crocheted mouse with oven dryed nip and roving stuffing.